Sheila Jackson Lee for Congress—Sheila Jackson Lee is running for re-election to U.S. Congress, Texas' 18th District

The African American News & Issues endorses Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee for re-election to the 18th Congressional District. Jackson Lee has been good for our community for many reasons and we need to return her as our voice in Washington.

Congresswoman Jackson Lee has been at the forefront of bringing jobs and federal funds to her district and the general Houston area. Jackson Lee has won 125 grants totaling $351,000 from the federal stimulus bill for Congressional District 18. This is the fourth-largest amount of funds brought to a district by a Texas Member of Congress.

The Congresswoman initiated the re-start of the local senior home repair program and spoke out about the backlog of thousands of requests for repairs. She has brought in $2.5 million for that program, along with millions more for a weatherization program. She also authored amendments to bills protecting the elderly that will help local law enforcement find seniors lost because of Alzheimer’s and other illnesses. Jackson Lee has received a perfect 100% rating from the Alliance for Retired Americans, a nationwide organization of more than 2.5 million union retirees.

Sheila Jackson Lee cares about our veterans. The Congresswoman has won a million dollars for Riverside Hospital to set up a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder treatment center for our veterans, the first one in a predominantly African American community. And when 66-year-old Houstonian C.B. Black asked Jackson Lee for help replacing the medals he had won while serving in Viet Nam, the Congresswoman got him those medals, including the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

In addition to the Riverside funding, the Congresswoman has also brought half a million dollars to the University of Texas in the Medical Center for a Minority Cancer Control Program and $1 million for the Prostate Cancer Outreach Project at the Center for Research on Minority Health.

As the chair of the Congressional Children’s Caucus, Jackson Lee has fought for bills to make our children and schools safer. In fact, it was the Congresswoman who brought the Centers for Disease Control to Houston when something at Key Middle School was making teachers and students sick.

She won $2 million for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Initiative, to encourage our kids to study science and math, and a $1 million grant for after-school programs in Houston schools, part of a total $1.7 billion dollars for improving schools and colleges. Those higher education funds include $400,000 for the University of Houston for teacher training and $3000 for archive preservation at TSU’s Mickey Leland Center. Most importantly, Jackson Lee got the federal government to cancel the $11 million TSU owed so that university can now move forward without that debt hanging over it.

Hurricanes Ike, Katrina and Rita affected the Houston area severely but Jackson Lee was there, getting supplies distributed to her district and bringing millions in federal assistance to the community. Just last month, the Congresswoman brought to Houston the FEMA director and asked him to extend relief to 20,000 local residents still recovering from Ike.

Jackson Lee has risen to senior positions on powerful committees, including Judiciary, Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security and chairs Homeland Security’s Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection Sub-Committee.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee works for District 18 and she delivers.